Tag Archives: Beach nourishment

This Saturday, May 25th at 3:30pm in Village Hall (Court Room), Quogue’s mayor and trustees will be holding a public hearing of great consequence for the future of Quogue’s natural beach.

The special meeting has been called to approve or deny a proposal by Save the Dunes and Beaches Foundation (“SDBF”) to establish an erosion control district in Quogue.

The special tax district is intended to socialize the costs of a long term beach engineering project, which will be launched following the formation of the district. Its creation would impose SDBF’s project and its costs upon all homeowners within the district, absent consensus support.

As the Village Beach falls within the planned district, all current and future Quogue residents will be affected, while the unintended environmental consequences of dredging will impact the entirety of Quogue’s beachfront.

SDBF represents a small subset of homeowners who have been advocating for variations of a beach engineering project since 2011.

In 2015, the Village appointed an equal number of SDBF and CCQ representatives, in addition to “nonpartisan” advisers, to a Beach Advisory Committee. The Committee concluded in 2017 that SDBF’s engineering project was unnecessary, instead recommending less invasive and more affordable methods of erosion control. CCQ maintains that the measure would be ecologically harmful and fiscally unsustainable.

The mayor and trustees will be voting to approve or deny the creation of the tax district following the meeting. Thus, Saturday’s public hearing constitutes the community’s only opportunity to register feedback regarding the plan.

We encourage all members of the community to reacquaint themselves with the science, potential consequences, and precedent of the matter, and please attend on Saturday to make your voices heard.

If you are unable to attend, you are invited to write a letter to the mayor at PSartorius@villageofquogueny.gov.

Below excerpts are from a December 17th editorial in Newsday. The full article is available here.

“Every year, it seems, the ocean washes away the sand covering the bags [installed as part of an artificial dune by the Army Corps of Engineers] and narrows the [Montauk] beach that brings the tourists who fuel the area’s economy…

“…The town is pursuing a plan to move downtown oceanfront businesses inland and let the abandoned grounds serve as the kind of natural dune that has always been the best barrier…

“Montauk is a lesson for all of Long Island. We can keep paying for short-term solutions doomed to failure, or make tough decisions that offer the best chance for long-term survival.”

Below excerpts are borrowed courtesy of a December 10th article and video published by Vox. The full article is available here.

About 80 to 90 percent of sandy beaches along America’s coastlines are eroding. This is a problem because the developments humans build near them are static. So as beaches shrink, coastal hazards can threaten to damage or destroy homes and businesses while negatively impacting tourism that depends on the beach.

The most popular strategy to counter these risks is a process called beach nourishment. Coastal engineers will add new sand to an eroding beach in order to rebuild or expand the shoreline.

But researchers discovered that coastal defense schemes like beach nourishment may ultimately do more harm than good by providing a false sense of security in critically eroding areas. There is evidence that beach nourishment can “mask or reduce the apparent impact of coastal hazards without changing the natural processes driving them.”

About

Concerned Citizens of Quogue, Inc., (CCQ) is a not-for-profit organization incorporated in 2013, whose members share a strong interest in protecting Quogue’s 2.7 miles of ocean beach and dunes, which are unquestionably the Village’s greatest assets. We are homeowners, taxpayers, voters and both summer and year-round residents. We share concern for the environment, especially as it pertains to coastal erosion, global warming and rising sea levels.

Mission

• To research and explore effective and affordable methods of growing and sustaining our dunes and beaches

• To enhance our knowledge by communicating with experts in Academia and in the field

• To educate the citizens of Quogue (adults and children alike) about the proper methods of beach and dune protection

• To establish a liaison with Quogue leaders and trustees to help create Plans designed to protect, grow, and sustain our dunes and beaches

Follow Our Blog

Enter your email address to follow CCQ's blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Support Us

To continue providing education and awareness, donations are always appreciated. Please make any checks payable to Concerned Citizens of Quogue. Thank you for your continued support.